This interview is with Delphine Mousseau, VP Markets at the fashion online retailer, Zalando. Delphine, who was on this podcast show back in 2012, is dealing with the complications and localization in 15 European countries. Zalando is a standout German success story, having turned profitable last year on sales over 2 billion euros. In this podcast, we discuss several of the localisation challenges, including payment, customer care, product offer and communication. A fascinating approach.
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Below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to go over to iTunes to rate the podcast.
To connect with Zalando and other sites mentioned by Delphine:
- You can see what Zalando is up to on Twitter: @Zalando
- Jobs at Zalando!
Zalando’s TV co-branded spot for France (with TopShop and Cara Delevingne)
- Clermont Ferrand University’s response #WeSayClermontFerrand for Cara Delevingne
- Zalando’s Italian TV spot
- The Amaze App – Tinder for fashion!
- Benchmarks for customer service for Zalando: Cool Blue, electronics and white goods online retailer in Holland and KLM customer service
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Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign off music is “Finger Paint,” written and performed by Josh Saxe, produced by Chase Geiser. Here’s a link on iTunes. I invite you to take a spin on Pierre’s podcast or listen to more of Josh’s music!
Transcription of the podcast with Delphine Mousseau
The following is a transcript of the interview, using Otter.ai. It’s been edited from the original for optimal comprehension. If you find errors, please excuse us! You’re welcome to comment them below and we’ll fix.
Minter Dial 0:00
So welcome to the Minter Dialogue. A repeat offender! We don’t have many of these on the show. Delphine Mousseau, thanks for coming back on the show. Delphine, tell us who you are and what you’re up to. And if you can, what is your mindset?
Delphine Mousseau 0:15
So, I’m Delphine. I’m a weird French person, because I have not been living in France for now more than 12 years. I’ve been working in e-commerce since 1999. And still really enjoying it a lot. So I’m now based in Berlin and working for Zalando. And I’m in charge of the market. So really leading our matrix organization from the country perspective. So excited to be here today, very relaxed with 35 degrees outside in Berlin. Feeling like summer?
Minter Dial 0:47
So Zalando. As we were talking before, it’s a highly well known brand. But for those who don’t know it, particularly well, how would you describe Zalando? What would be some of the key components to understand what is Zalando?
Delphine Mousseau 0:59
So Zalando is a multi-brand fashion store with actually 1500 brands and 150,000 products every season. So you can find everything you think about in terms of fashion, at Zalando, from the basic brands to the most advanced brands, premium brands, just think about men, women, kids, accessories, sports, lingerie you name it, we have it.
Minter Dial 1:30
And what about your size? How big are you and and who would you consider your competitors?
Delphine Mousseau 1:37
So our size is, last year, we did actually 2.2 billion turnover euros across 15 countries in Europe. We don’t have really direct competitors, we have a lot of competitors in niche like Asos, for instance. We have competitors doing all sorts of assortment like Amazon, but the overlap with us is quite limited. So I would say we don’t have really comparable, at least in sizes, competitors, because we’re really offering a range, which we cannot be found any anywhere else. We are the biggest sneaker store in Europe, we are the biggest venue store in Europe. So if you’re looking for something specific, you’re sure to find it at our place. Not sure you can find it at our competitors.
Minter Dial 2:20
One of the things that we often talk about with e-commerce is the profitability and and zalando marks itself out by being profitable. Tell us what you can tell us about the profitability?
Delphine Mousseau 2:32
So Zalando started really, really strong. I mean, it’s a very young company only six or seven years ago, they started you know, from scratch. So it’s been growing super, super fast. And mostly because of course a lot of money has been injected to create the brand, creating the awareness, but also, you know, play with all the influencer marketing channels, and really, you know, raise their traffic that’s needed to get the volume. So for long, actually, we’ve been losing a lot of money, but really investing in the long term through our high growth. Last year, we showed good profits, with 62.1 million euro profit. So it was not really expected in the market. And I think this is why our IPO went so well. Actually, we managed to show that we can grow fast, but at the same time profitably.
Minter Dial 3:20
So you’ve been developing the brand, how would you characterize or, or qualify, what is the Zalando brand?
Delphine Mousseau 3:26
So the Zalando brand is really your fashion partner, you know someone where you can find the fashion trends relevant for you, where you can get the right advice, when you can make where you can get the right selection of products. And we’re getting stronger and stronger in our personalization to make sure that you really have the relevant fashion experience for you.
Minter Dial 3:51
Right, so Delphine, you’re in 15 countries in Europe, correct?
Delphine Mousseau 3:56
Yes.
Minter Dial 3:57
And you’re dealing with all these different markets. So one of the things that always wanted to dig in with you is how you are going about adapting to each of the markets? Because … Oh, I know, another question I want to ask you before we get into that, which is about your offline presence, because you know, there’s sort of this rumbling that online is great. First of all, not necessarily always profitable. And can we exist only online? How do you react to that? What’s your strategy with regard to on and off.
Delphine Mousseau 4:24
So, there are several elements in there. First, you need to get your mind right. And I have to say, we’ve been starting in Germany, and in what we call the DACH countries, so Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and trying to expand from from those countries. And I have to say, we’ve made a lot of progress in the other countries across Europe. But we’re seeing that we still have a way to go, a lot of room for localization. So we’ll talk a bit later about what we’ve been doing recently. But we have a lot still, you know, before we can consider alternative ways of growing, so I would say, let’s first work on the recipes which are: let’s get to our online experience. Right, then on offline, I think this is something definitely we need to work on. We are doing pop up stores, we are doing collaboration with fashion weeks, here and there in different cities. In Europe, the next one being the Stockholm Fashion Week, at the end of August, we try to be really present and visible locally. Going to the offline store and trying to have our shopping experience offline is still not yet defined It’s something that we still have in mind. But I think it’s premature at the moment, because we’ve got so much more to do just to make the experience online as good as it can be.
Minter Dial 5:36
Surely, let’s say it’s an interesting thing, because, you know, we live with the screen in between us, you and I are Skyping. And it’s a very human experience, right as we speak? And you know, of course, nothing’s going to replace the old handshake. At the same time, you know, you do need to get into people’s minds. And so the communication efforts and TV or, you know, old-fashioned newspapers can still be ways to get into people’s minds, which you know, it’s considered as offline. And then there’s, you know, making the experience more interesting. Getting into the people’s minds, the opinion leaders. And so it’s such an interesting challenge to move from an e-commerce only online into that other space that’s typically occupied by the typical offline players.
Delphine Mousseau 6:26
I think, to keep the communication going, definitely, we’re working on having more and more touchpoints. I think at the beginning, Zalando was very much focusing on the TV campaign. I think it was one of the first ecommerce player really using TV heavily. We had an this scream advertising, you know, that somehow could be the you the German humor was not always fitting all the markets, but will be very chatting really loud. And I think it really helped the brand awareness at the beginning of our journey. Now we’re really trying to get more touch points. So we’re doing out of home campaigns, we’re doing print campaigns, we’re doing events, we’re doing all sorts of things to make sure that we can have several contacts with our customers. When you talk about having a closer relationship, we’re trying new stuff, which are working quite well. For instance, we’ve launched recently in Germany, our salon, which is basically a contact with fashion advisor. So you’re in contact with one person in particular was going to put together an outfit for you with you know, head to toe and sending it to you. And then you can try it on and keep what you like. So this is the kind of way you can have these kind of personal contact and really be close in the fashion,
business fashion advice basically.
Minter Dial 7:35
And so Zalando is based in Germany, and the, you know, some huge portion of your business is presumably German, I don’t know exactly what you know, what it represents for the total. But one of the things you and I were talking about we’re going to get into is, is the idea of the sort of central office, the managing, directing, controlling, and you know, the countries must obey, let’s talk about some American companies that are very much command and control, you know, from from central office, let’s call Apple, you know, not to mention others. You guys are in the process, you have a very strong German market, you have some very German-speaking companies as you just mentioned And you’re developing the other countries. Talk us through your strategy of trying to evolve from a sort of a command and control into a more localized approach.
Delphine Mousseau 8:21
Yeah. So I think at the beginning, basically, the idea was to take the German USP, which is free shipping and free return, and also the payment and invoice and basically spread it. So, just go and conquer the different markets in Europe. It worked out well, in some countries like Switzerland, which is very close. Somehow as good also in the Netherlands, but other countries, it was not really working as good. So very quickly realized, we need to have a local twist to whatever we do. So we had basically dedicated market people in each of the sections. Last year, we’ve reorganized and went into a matrix organization. So basically, we have all the people dealing with, with one country sitting together here in Berlin. It’s very easy for me managing Europe, I can go downstairs on the ground floor to talk to France or Netherlands or to the second floor of the Nordics. But it really created this idea that we have really a local strategy, and then each function is contributing to the success of that local strategy. And and really brings these these understanding these local understanding. So of course, we’re recruiting a lot of local people to work here in Berlin, to address those local topics.
Minter Dial 9:27
So, how many offices are there in each of the countries I mean, what is Zalando in Italy look like as opposed to so you know, the Italian team in Germany, in Berlin?
Delphine Mousseau 9:38
So everything is based in Berlin. We’ve had a buying office in Paris, because we have a lot of specific French friends. So, at some point, open different offices, the one in Paris is the one which is now still there, because it really makes sense to have a presence locally. Everything else is done out of Berlin.
Minter Dial 9:55
And when you hire people for Italy, do you have to have an Italian?
Delphine Mousseau 10:01
Depending on the functions. I would say if it’s a commercial planner, it doesn’t really matter, though we have a lot of applicants from southern Europe because, of course, you know, unemployment rate is a bit higher.
Minter Dial 10:11
Indeed
Delphine Mousseau 10:13
But uh, indeed, we try to have locals as much as possible.
Minter Dial 10:17
In the realm of problems that ecommerce has. One of them was profitability, there are problems that, you know, myths we have about it. One of them is this challenge of being profitable. Another one is trust. And, and the trustworthiness of your of the of the brand you’re buying from, you know, trusting in general marketers. One of those areas of trust is in the payment area. So talk us through how you’ve had to, you know, deal with the payment component, country, by country in different ways.
Delphine Mousseau 10:51
It’s extremely important, I think the trust comes from the experience, and you need to have a perfect experience. And a perfect experience means something very different by country. So it’s true that, you know, being leader is the best way to get the trust. So the payment on invoice, which is the preferred payment methods in most of the DACH countries is helping a lot because of course, as a new customer, basically, you don’t take any risk. It is not the case, in the rest of Europe. In most countries, if it werepay on invoice, of course, no one would pay the invoice, so that we would not work. We just wanted to give the example of Italy. I mean, Italy is is some way in the in terms of payment, very, very far behind. 29% of the Italians do not have a bank account. That’s really huge.
Minter Dial 11:38
It’s crazy, because there’s so many banks in Italy!
Delphine Mousseau 11:42
This is how it is, you know. Of course, maybe it’s not completely our target audience. But still, culturally, not having a bank account is okay. You know, not having a bank account in France would be really weird. And so we’ve moved to offering cash on delivery in Italy more than two years ago. And the impact has been tremendous. I mean, it’s more than half of our payments are done through cash on delivery. So it’s a different kind of relationship, people really have to give the money to the carrier. And most of the time, they actually know the carrier, you know, they know what they post man, they give their money to their post man, and in this kind of way that you can create trust.
Minter Dial 12:20
And so I mean, I want to just unpack one portion of that, which is the choice of your carrier. I assume that’s all third party. And and then, you know, to what extent that trust component via the carrier is so relevant, like: do you want to go with La Poste in France and UPS in other countries? Or how do you how do you work that to find the best combination?
Delphine Mousseau 12:45
Most of the time, the local national carrier has got, you know, the historical relationship and the trust, so we tend to go for the local carriers.
But we have learned in different countries that it would make sense sometimes to go for a bit more expensive carrier and have the better relationship. So wherever we’ve got the choice, really, I’ve been very cautious in choosing. What we see in the development for the future is that we need to have more options. And even though we’ve got free shipping for the basic options, we’re adding new carrier services. So we’ve added an Active Express last year, so people can pay extra to get their shipment faster, we’re going to add extra options. So for instance, in Switzerland, since January, we’re shipping, a sort of a form of Express. So basically, your order is batched prior in the warehouse, and then it’s shipped in the evening and then given to the carrier during the night, go through customs, and then you get the delivery in the evening. So people who are working, they love this Active Express because it’s one to one and a half days later, but you get it specifically in the evening after six o’clock. So it’s a very practical product for people. The adoption rate has been really, really high.
Minter Dial 14:03
Drones?
Delphine Mousseau 14:05
I can’t give you any numbers.
Minter Dial 14:07
Drones, drones!
Delphine Mousseau 14:10
Drones could be an option. The question is, you know, how do you deal with food and people killing the parcels things.
Minter Dial 14:16
Or shooting down the local thing,
Delphine Mousseau 14:18
If the drone is able to come back with a signature and receipt, then I’m fine with drones!
Minter Dial 14:23
And what about marketing or the advertising? How have you managed that? Because at the end of the day, you know, having been, you know, Chief Marketing people, we are always interested in having consistent branding and then optimization of your costs, because it’s so much better to have one TV shoot that works for everybody. How have you approached that?
Delphine Mousseau 14:48
So we started, of course, by having one spot for everyone everywhere. And then we thought, okay, we need to go local, because we need to have a specific humor per country. Because the first spots were very onto having something humoristic to be easier to be memorized. And we realized, actually, this is not really the way to go. What we’ve really understood is that we need to have a local message, like something which is really relevant to the level of maturity of each market. So I will give an example. For instance, in Italy, we’ve had already a campaign and we’re going to continue with a specific campaign with a local testimonial. So a model who is really known in Italy. So to create this trust, but also to explain that it’s so easy to get this free shipping, free return, makes your your purchase really easy. And it sounds basic, but for Italians the returns, for instance, is not that obvious. We seen in focus groups that when we talk about returns, people think that they’re going to get a refund in voucher not to refund in money. There is some kind of guilt also from the Italian customer, that if they return, it means they broke their promise, you know, I promise that I am going to buy that product. And then if I don’t buy it in the end, so I’m guilty. It’s just like, sorry, what’s your problem, you know. And we’re going to show in our autumn spot that actually returning, even if you don’t like it, it’s okay. You can change your mind.
Minter Dial 16:16
So are you absolutely different creatives for each? Or do you have a video creative that you just voiceover differently?
Delphine Mousseau 16:25
No, it’s company it’s completely different creatives. We choose, like certain markets that we push for a certain time. And once we think their education and the understanding of the USPs are the right level, then we can go back to our our main core message.
Minter Dial 16:39
Alright, so in this localization process, you do an ad. And of course, we’re in this sort of new world, we have to optimize and repurpose our ads. So this means that you’re doing an Italian specific creative. And then presumably, that means you also have a very social specific approach to Italy as well?
Delphine Mousseau 16:59
Yeah, especially because he is very social. Italy is one of the country where the social media is the highest in the way that, for instance, in Nordics, people use social media but are mostly looking or observer. In Italy, they are participants. But let’s go back just on the localization. I’m going to give you another example, which is quite interesting. We had a very big campaign with Kara Delavigne. With Topshop, co-branded campaign. And actually, it was a global spot. Like most of the countries carrying Topshop assortment had the same spot. But she was trying to pronounce it. It was a tongue twister. She was trying to pronounce the difficult names of the cities where actually Zalando is shipping. But she was pronouncing a different city for each country. So she would say Clermont Ferrand for France. So she would say [UNCLEAR NAME] for Austria. So even on something which is actually generically done for all the countries, we give this little extra local twist, because this is what people can relate with, you know. It’s extremely important to give this local flavor that people feel like we’re talking to them and not some generic European flavor.
Minter Dial 18:10
A generic voiceover. So actually, so in the creative brief, you have, you know, let’s say some trunk of the creative which is the same and then you added Hey, Kara, you need to say one for Germany, one for France, one for actually one for Spain, one for Portugal, Blablablah.
Delphine Mousseau 18:25
Exactly. But this is something that didn’t came to us supernaturally at the beginning. Once we tested it, we realized that it’s a must. It’s really how it works. And we had a friend actually a copy of our thoughts by Clermont Ferrand University. And it’s pretty fun to see how people really connect when when we talk local.
Minter Dial 18:44
That’s cool. All right, and another thing that of course is so important if you take the Amazon example is customer care. And I think customer care by itself is an important topic because typically, I’d say most companies, or a lot of companies, even though it has the word customer in it, they somehow for some reason don’t really give it as much value. They like to outsource it. They put it in the the warehouse or you know, the cheapest possible group of people and and yet, it is the the link with the customer that many b2c companies like L’Oreal or others, you know, that’s their real opportunity to interface. So customer care is super important. What is your approach to customer care? And by the way, I would love to know do you benchmark against? Who do you benchmark against in order to establish, you know, strengthen your customer care?
Delphine Mousseau 19:38
So customer care is definitely extremely important. We’ve been focusing since the beginning of the year and into the the NPS, really the the satisfaction of our customers. And it’s true that in the past, it was not the main center of attention, because we were looking for growth and we couldn’t really afford to have a perfect customer care. So we’ve really made good progress. Talking about localization, funny example is that, for instance, for Switzerland, which is quite a big country for us, we used to have German speakers from Germany, of course, out of Berlin, so much, so much easier. And at some point, we decided to move to Swiss German, and the satisfaction of our customer increased by double digits. So it’s interesting to even in those small details that this feel local is really important. What we’ve done recently, we rolled out chats for customer care. So we see a very good result on chat. So we’re really moving from customer care is being must do into Customer Care being really a way to create satisfaction with our customers. So definitely an area where we investing quite a lot.
Minter Dial 20:42
So ultimately that’s quite complicated, because that means that you know, you have the Austrian telephone calls coming in or the Swiss German company calls coming in, you have to manage the flow, as opposed to having, you know, Germans for everybody. So that’s more expensive.
Delphine Mousseau 21:02
Yeah, well, the good thing is that we’re getting so big that we can afford to have this complexity. I’m happy I’m not paying off customer care, because it’s still complex, but it’s manageable. And basically, we have the critical size to be able to do it. Most of the tools are getting more and more sophisticated from a customer care point of view, because customers want to be reached where they are, the same way you want to interact on Facebook with a company you want to interact with for your problem on Facebook. So you were talking about who do we compare with? I think it depends on countries in Europe,. I would say for countries which are more advanced in customer care are the Netherlands. For the Dutch, breaking the promise is a big, big issue. Trust is really based on you know, keeping the promise. So whenever something goes wrong, you better make sure that you talk about it you address the problem. And I think two examples are really good: KLM is amazing. KLM, if you take a flight tells you during when you enter as a first message will answer any your questions on social media within the hour. And they’re really keeping the promise. Another company that is interesting is also Cool Blue, which has been growing on electronics only and white goods, and basically grown from nothing to something quite big, focused on customer care. So those are the kind of examples we look at. I don’t think this is the benchmark for everybody in Europe, because not everyone has got the same expectations. But this is really where we think we should be going.
Minter Dial 22:28
That’s super interesting. And we’re just think about, because you and I are multilingual. We’re living in Europe. I was just thinking, so do you have customer care for his Strasbourg as opposed to Lille?
Delphine Mousseau 22:42
Yes, but I must say maybe one day,
Minter Dial 22:45
Exactly. Or you know, Belgian French versus French French.
Delphine Mousseau 22:49
We’ve got Belgian French!
Minter Dial 22:50
You do? As opposed to French French?
Delphine Mousseau 22:53
Not all agents, but we tend to try and make sure that we’ve got Belgium agents possible.
Minter Dial 22:59
So is your customer care in house?
Delphine Mousseau 23:02
Not all but a big part is.
Minter Dial 23:04
Yeah, yeah. And so the other thing with customer care is the amount of information you have to feed them. I’ve been in a few other organizations where you’re dealing with 1500 brands, 150,000 products, and having to keep them aware of what’s going on all the time in Belgian French and French French, and so on and so forth. How do you manage that?
Delphine Mousseau 23:27
So, I think we just managed by having really high expectations. We’ve really put high expectation in terms of first contact resolution. So, if you want to meet those targets, you need to be aware of what’s going on. So we’ve got an information person, each team grabbing all the information for each of that market. So we’ve got a lot of information circulating in between the market and the customer care of that market to make sure that they know what kind of promotions going on, what kind of voucher is used, what kind of specific action on the app is going on. So is a big, big flow of information.
Minter Dial 24:02
It seems so important. The last area I wanted to talk about was product because you have so many products. Is it one for all? How much are you, you know, culling and swapping and changing the offer per country? And how do you manage that? Because that’s that’s sort of a logistical nightmare.
Delphine Mousseau 24:22
Yeah. So for now, I think I would say we’re really definitely linked up on the shopping experience. So everything which lead to putting things in your best kids payment, shipping, returns, refund, I would say on the fashion experience, we still have way to go. And I hope this is where I can bring a bit more value. And I would say we have a very good local assortment. Not yet perfect. But I would say in each market, we’ve got the key brands, which makes sense for the market. And basically, we’re very good at giving you a personalized view based on what you’ve been browsing before. So recommendation engine and things, are very sophisticated. So you can get a quick glance of what you need. So if you like one product, and you want something at a slightly different price and different color, and you can look at the recommendation on the page, and it works really, really well. However, we aim as being even more personalized. So for instance, we’ve launched now partnership with the Amaze, which is an app, sort of a Tinder for fashion. So this is the kind of way that you should collect more information to help you have a personalized experience. So basically, the products you see on Amaze are the Zalando products, maybe some more around but mostly Zalando products, and basically you like / don’t like and then you go deeper in the offer. Because the problem is that having so many products, people can get lost. And this is not what we want, so we want to guide them in looking at what is relevant for them.
Minter Dial 25:45
So one of the things I noticed, you have Luxury as one of your tabs on Zalando. And I was just interested to figure out how you would determine “luxury.” Is there an argument, you know? Do some brands say I want to be luxury?
Delphine Mousseau 26:02
Yeah, somehow yes. I mean, some brands really position themselves in premium. Some brands want to have double exposure in the main catalog and in the premium, the ones who are at the sweet spot. Some brands really don’t want to be mixed up, even though some of their articles are at a decent price point that would be the main catalog. So it’s a bit of an ongoing discussion. What’s important is that people looking for premium are not disappointed. So they need to find what they’re looking for. So they get there only cheaper stuff that would not be pleased. So we need to make sure that it’s really what people are looking for.
Minter Dial 26:36
So in this sort of area of localization, you got all these customers that are in these 50 markets. And as we know, email remains an important part. I’m sure you can maybe tell us a little bit about that. But how do you manage to have a mass customization? I mean, because that’s sort of where a lot of these ecommerce sites are having to go to. You have of the recommendations that are personalized, presumably? Talk us through how you approach trying to create a less, you know, monolithic company into something that feels like: Oh, this is for Minter!
Delphine Mousseau 27:14
Yeah, we’re moving on, step by step. I cannot tell all the plans, because they’re going to be executed in the coming 12 months. But I would say we’ve got an approach similar to a department store, you know, it depends on the shop floor and in the corner. And basically, when you go into Galeries Lafayette or House of Fraser, you see different groupments of brands and somehow this is the kind of feeling we need to reproduce on site. We collect a lot of information on your behavior. So we’ve got the data, now we need to work it out to make it really work as precisely as possible for you. I think what is really interesting is that we’re less on the newsletter and more on the app, and people interact more and more. And we’ve got ways to interact. For instance, we have our product feed. So at the bottom of the page, you have a lot of products and you can say I like them, I don’t like them. I can like that brand or not like that brand. And that helps really bascially learning what is relevant for you. So the same way, as you discuss with a sales rep when you’re entering the store and say I don’t like it, you can also interact with Zalando, and say I don’t like it. So we can show you products, which are more relevant for you as you interact with us. So it’s keeping this conversation going. And we’re going to get more and more efficient at it.
Minter Dial 28:29
Give me an idea of mobile as opposed to desktop. Where are you in terms of business? Can you give me some stats?
Delphine Mousseau 28:37
Yeah, of course, we’ve got more than half of our traffic going to mobile already. And it’s growing a lot. And we really think that we need to be mobile first. And we’re developing most of our new, all of our new developments first on mobile.
Minter Dial 28:52
Like the last area, the last question, Delphine, is within the trust category. So, we’ve talked about the payment component, the logistics component. And then there’s this notion of transparency, what is your position with regard to transparency? And much can different markets tolerate lack of transparency or opacity? Is this something that every country says, Listen, do as I say and say, as I do? Or are, are there some countries that still sort of allow some less attractive approaches to pricing, for example?
Delphine Mousseau 29:34
I think, you know, the consumer is a bit schizophrenic. He wants to have something very personalized, but not necessarily want to give the information. So it’s like going to the doctor and saying, you know, I don’t want to address it, but tell me, what’s my problem? It just doesn’t work. So culturally, some countries have really an issue with their data privacy. So like Germany is really protecting a lot, and making sure the information is shared to a certain extent. In the end, it works only if people are, you know, share their behavior, so we can really help them the best possible. So an alternative approach, as I was mentioning, is the personal interaction. So if you don’t want to basically interact with the machine, and you can talk to someone, I mean, we give all the options. So the consumer can make it more personalized through personal interactions at Zalando or less human machine, you can track some more, because he’s only trying to limit his time, because he’s basically playing on his mobile. Everyone’s got a different behavior, and we can offer basically different ways of addressing the needs of the customer.
Minter Dial 30:36
All right, Delphine, our time is up. I really appreciate your time. So I don’t want to grab you for any longer and take advantage of you. There’s a friend over in the States who says: Well, what do you have a shameless plug you want to give to us?
Delphine Mousseau 30:47
Yeah, the point that I really want to mention is that we’re growing really, really fast. And I’ve got a lot empty seats around me. So that would be really, really nice. If people would look at jobs at Zalando.de to get some interesting positions that we have open.
Minter Dial 31:05
Does that include, you know, people moving? I mean, does it have to get people expatriating?
Delphine Mousseau 31:12
Berlin is fantastic. So come here. It’s got the creativity of Europe, the dynamism, the good spirit, low tax. I mean, lovely weather. What can you expect more? It’s a great culture, too.
Minter Dial 31:25
So, Delphine, what’s the best way someone can reach you or follow what you’re up to in terms of social or whatever you like?
Delphine Mousseau 31:32
You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, go to the website and mostly download the Zalando app!
Minter Dial 31:36
All right, we’ll do we’ll put all that into the show notes. Delphine, thanks for coming on the show. Danke sehr schon!
Delphine Mousseau 31:42
Thank you so much.
Minter Dial 31:44
Thanks for having listened to this recording of the Minter dialogue show. You’ll find the show notes on www.minterdial.com.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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